Cryptid US

by Tyler Houck

  Two police officers, Jerry Floyd and John Whitaker, went to the Harrison’s property but found nothing. Later that night, Harrison and several others explored Marzolf Hill. They smelled a bad odor Harrison described as “a moldy, horse smell or a strong garbage smell.” He smelled the smell on other occasions when he was near areas emitting weird noises.

  At 5:00 the next morning, Pat Howard saw a “dark object” walk like a man across the road.

  On the 19th, police chief Shelby Ward, Edgar Harrison, State Conservation officer Gus Artus, and seventeen others searched for the MoMo on Marzolf Hill. They found nothing.

  The next day, Richard Crowe, a reporter for the Irish Times and Fate magazine, went to Marzolf Hill, along with Loren Smith. They found a “circular spot in the brush where leaves and twigs had been snipped from branches” where Doris Harrison had seen the monster. Crowe also found evidence where someone or something had been digging in an old garbage dump. Edgar Harrison showed him two old dog graves where the bones had been dug up and scattered about. Higher on the hill they found two tracks. The first was over 10 inches long and was 5 inches wide, and appeared to be a footprint. The other was a five inch handprint. (Possible Bigfoot handprints have also been found in Ohio, see page 19.) Both of the prints were made in hard soil (it hadn’t rained there in over 10 days), and Crowe estimated that it would take something weighing over 200 pounds to make them.

  Harrison then led Crowe to an old shack where he thought the monster would occasionally rest. While they were there, Harrison’s dog suddenly ran away, and they smelled the horrible smell attributed to the monster. “That’s him, boys!” Harrison yelled. “He’s around here somewhere.”

  They pulled out their flashlights and checked the surrounding trees, but didn’t see MoMo. They heard dogs barking in the distance. Usually when the monster was on the hill, people said dogs would refuse to go in the area and would run up and down the streets, in an agitated state. Within five minutes of when Harrison and Crowe had first smelled the odor it had

  disappeared.

  Harrison, Loren Smith, and Crowe would smell the odor a second time before the night was over.

  On Friday, July 21, Ellis Minor heard his dog start to growl around 10:30 p.m. He thought at first that there was another dog in his yard, but when the dog kept growling, he stepped outside with a powerful flashlight. He then saw a 6-‐foot tall, black, hairy creature standing like a man. When the light hit it, it ran into the woods. By this time, Edgar Harrison was obsessed with finding out what the monster was. He had refused to come home after the howling incident on the 14th, and had taken up residence at a restaurant the family ran downtown. He camped out at the foot of Marzolf Hill for 21 nights in a row. Nothing could make him stop looking for the monster, even a report from Oklahoma City’s Zoo director saying that the print he found “does not seem like a natural print made by any living animal.”

  Harrison never got a chance to lay his eyes on MoMo. He did, however, feel that he had succeeded in making a discovery that added a whole new level to the mystery -‐ he believed the smell attributed to the monster was a stink gas used to distract people when they were searching for the creature.

  In late July, mysterious three-‐toed tracks appeared on a farm eight miles south of Louisiana. On August third, Mr. and Mrs. Bill Suddarth heard strange screams coming from their yard. They ran outside and found four three-‐toed tracks in their garden. Suddarth called his friend Clyd Penrod, who came and made a cast of the best print. He said he could not understand how the tracks had been made. No one was able to solve the mystery in 1972, and it remains that way to the present day.

  Wisconsin is Bigfoot Territory

  Wisconsin seems to be a state with lots of cryptid activity. There have been many reports of Bigfoot, which will be told in this section, along with lake monsters like Rocky(see chapter two), the

  Hodag(chapter five), and werewolves(chapter four). One Bigfoot, dubbed the “Lima Marsh Monster” by author Linda S. Godfrey, was seen by a college student on March 9, 2005. It was seen near the Lima Marsh Wildlife Area. The witness said she saw a large, furry biped run across the road. A year later, Lenny and Stacie Faytus saw the same creature, and they were positive it was a Bigfoot. The couple owns a restaurant in Delavan called the Richmond House. The knew nothing about the college student’s experience at the time of their sighting. They said their sighting occurred at the end of April or the Beginning of May.

  Lenny and Stacie were driving to a pet-‐sitting job on McCord Road in the late afternoon. They saw a farmer in a field with an unusual number of lights on his equipment (it was not quite dark yet). “We thought he must be scared of something,” Lenny said. “He must have had 15 lights on, pointed 360 degrees around his tractor.”

  Minutes later, Lenny saw something strange moving up ahead. The creature came out of the woods and started walking across the road. As Lenny continued to drive towards the creature, which was now crossing the road, he realized it was no deer. “ I thought, ‘it must be a person’,” Lenny said. “But it was a medium brown color, like a deer. It stood upright, and walked in quick, easy strides across the road.” Both Lenny and Stacie said they felt like they had gotten a message from the creature telling them to “stay out.” They quickly left the area.

  In 1964, a Delavan man driving home from work saw a dark, fur covered creature he said was a Bigfoot standing in a cornfield. The creature leaped over a four-‐ foot fence easily and ran across the road, standing upright the whole time.

  Two women who grew up around Palmyra said they saw a Bigfoot in the 1970s.

  Also in the 1970s, a woman who lived in Jefferson County contacted DNR officials to report that she had seen a tall, hairy, ape-‐like creature near her farm. David Gjetson drove out to investigate but found nothing. Gjetson received another call from the woman two weeks later. She said the creature was back and had tried to break into her house. It then ran to the barn and attacked a horse. She said it left huge tracks, but Gjetson was able to find none.

  One woman said Bigfoot had picked her up and carried her. Some Indians say the Bigfoot creatures are cannibals and carry off women and children, but this one did not do that. The woman said she had lost her balance and fell down a hill when she heard something sniffing her. She never opened her eyes, but the creature grabbed her and carried her back up to the road. She said the creature carried her very gently and easily. She could feel it breathing on her as it carried her up the hill. When she opened her eyes, she was back at the top of the hill with her sister. She then discovered that she had broken her ankle when she fell down the hill. Neither she nor her sister saw the creature, but she knew it was something big.

  Another incident occurred one summer when a woman said her friends who had come over asked why the neighbors had a huge, hairy statue in their yard. When t
he woman and her friends went over to look, the “statue” was gone! The woman said she had Bigfoot activity on her property that summer and the summer before.

  Lima Marsh, where Bigfoot has been seen in Wisconsin

  2 Lake Monsters and Other Aquatic Critters

  When the first sailors went out to sea, they told stories of “Sea Serpents” they saw on their voyages. Similar creatures are seen in lakes all over the world. They used to be called “sea serpents” in the lakes, but now everyone calls them lake monsters. These creatures are seen in lakes (and a few rivers) all across the United States. The lake and river monsters discussed in this chapter are only a tiny fraction of all the strange aquatic monsters spotted in America, and they are just as strange as any other monster.

  Champ

  By far, the most famous American lake monster is “Champ” of Lake Champlain. Lake Champlain is located between New York and Vermont and extends a little up into Canada. The lake is 109 miles long and its maximum depth is 400 feet -‐ that’s plenty of room for a monster to hide. Lake Champlain is the largest oligotrophic lake in the U.S. with the exception of the Great Lakes. A couple thousand years ago, the lake was part of a larger body of water called the Champlain Sea, an arm of the Atlantic Ocean. Eventually the lake was cut off from the rest of the sea and became fresh water.

  What could be the first sighting of a monster in Lake Champlain occurred in the year 1609. According to historians, Samuel de Champlain, who the lake is named after, saw “a serpent-‐like creature, about 20 feet long, as thick as a barrel, and with a head like a horse.”

  Samuel de Champlain

  Champ has been seen many, many times since then. I went to Lake Champlain in the summer of 2013 and met a woman who had seen Champ. She said she had seen it in the 1980s, when it rose out of the water, swam a little ways, and then disappeared under the surface. She said it had a large hump and a long neck. She thinks that it likes the colder water near the bottom of the lake and that is why it is not seen much.

  Many people think that Champ and other lake monsters

  Could be plesiosaurs, ancient marine reptiles that lived

  During the age of the dinosaurs

  I also met Lorraine Franklin, owner of Champ’s Trading Post in Vermont. She told me of a sighting where a man saw a huge creature swimming alongside his boat.

  The most famous Champ sighting occurred on July 5, 1977, when Sandra Mansi saw Champ rise from the lake and took a picture of it. That picture is one of the best photos of any lake monster. Sandra’s children were playing in the lake when she saw the monster. Her husband Anthony went to the car and grabbed the camera. He handed it to Sandra and went to get the kids out of the water. Sandra said that the whole sighting lasted about 5 minutes.

  Sandra Mansi’s Photographof Champ Scientists have looked at the Mansi photo, and it has never been proven to be a fake. Sandra still sticks to her story to this day.

  Joseph Zarzynski lists over 200 Champ sightings in his book Champ: Beyond the Legend. But, there have been many more sightings since the publication of his book in 1984. His book is my personal favorite on the subject of Champ.

  Rocky, The Monster in Rock Lake

  Champ may have a cousin dubbed “Rocky” living in Rock Lake, Wisconsin. Rock Lake is also known for its 30 foot high pyramids that sit below its surface. No one knows if they are man-‐made or natural, or how they got to the bottom of the lake. The Indians in the area called them “rock tepees” but could not explain them. In the late 1800s, fishermen and boaters started reporting something other than rock pyramids. They had seen a giant, snake-‐like creature in the lake. Most lake monsters are usually said to be curious and shy, but this one was not. Fred Seaver, a fisherman, said it took his line and pulled him across the lake for a mile and a half. Another fisherman said he actually speared it, but it was too strong for him to drag to shore. The people around the lake dubbed it “The Terror.”(This is starting to sound like an episode of Scooby Doo, isn’t it?)

  As the years passed, the creature seemed to grow more aggressive. Two men racing in rowboats said they saw a monster with an upraised head and jaws lined with teeth. The men tried to fight off the monster with their oars, and were soon joined by some men who had rowed out with a shotgun. By the time the others got there, the creature had disappeared under the water and left a foul stench behind.

  Sightings stopped in Rock Lake as time went on, but then started in Red Cedar Lake, located about 5 miles away. Some people think old Rocky left Rock Lake and went to Red Cedar Lake. After awhile, reports also stopped coming from Red Cedar Lake. Some think the monster worked his way back to Rock Lake, and he was seen there in 1943. Joseph Davis saw about 6 feet of the monster rise out of the water. Rocky has not been seen much since then.

  South Bay Bessie The monster seen in Lake Erie obviously got it’s nickname copied from Scotland’s famous Nessie. “Bessie”, as it is called, has been seen in Lake Erie since 1793, when the captain of the sloop Felicity saw “a serpentine creature more than a rod (16 1/2 feet) in length.”

  The monster was then seen twice in 1817. On July 7, Captain Shubael West and his crew on the schooner Delia saw a “serpent” 30 to 40 feet long. Another boat’s crew fired at a creature they said was “copper-‐colored and 60 feet in length.” Their shots had no effect.

  Two brothers named Dusseau saw a 20 to 30 foot long monster in 1887. They assumed it was in its death throes. They said it looked like a sturgeon, but it had “arms.” They left to get rope and capture the creature, but it was gone when they returned.

  That must not have been dying Bessie, because the monster was seen again in July of 1892. Captain Woods of the schooner Madaline saw a “huge serpent” while en route from Buffalo, New York, to Toledo. He said it was “wrestling around in the water, as if it was fighting with some unseen foe.” Its eyes were “viciously sparkling.” Woods said it was 50 feet long, with a four-‐foot circumference, and it had prominent fins on its back.

  On May 5, 1896, the monster was seen by four witnesses off Crystal Beach. They watched it for 45 minutes and said it had a dog’s head and a pointed tail.

  On July 8, 1898, the Sandusky Daily Register said that Lake Erie’s monster population had been verified and that “their existence can no longer be questioned.”

  They were described as “fierce, ugly, coiling creatures.” They were said to be amphibious and 25 to 30 feet long.

  Another known hoax at Lake Erie occurred on April Fools day of 1912. The Sandusky Daily Register (once again) said the monster had been seen breaking through a sheet of ice near Kelleys Island, heading towards shore with mouth agape and fangs displayed.

  Kelleys Island

  In July of 1931, a “monster” was captured at Sandusky. The “monster”, however, turned out to be a python. (For more on mysterious snakes, see chapter 6.)

  T
he next sighting occurred in 1960, when Ken Golic saw a “cigar-‐shaped creature.” It’s back rose about 18 inches out of the water.

  Jim Schindler said the monster passed within six feet of him in 1969 while he was fishing. He said it was two feet wide, but did not know how long it was.

  A serpentine creature “so large that it could capsize a boat” was seen “playing” in 1981. Mary Landoll saw Bessie in 1983. She thought at first that the creature was a 50 foot capsized boat, but then a long neck rose out of the water. She said she saw an eye and a “grin” on its face.

  A dark brown monster was seen in the summer of 1985. It had “a flat tail and 5 humps.” “There’s no way it was a sturgeon,” Tony Schill, one of the witnesses, said. Dale Munro also saw Bessie later that same year, near the Lorain Coast Guard Station. He said it had three humps and was twice the length of his 16-‐foot long boat.

  Gail Kasner saw Bessie on a fish finder in 1989. The object was 30 feet below the boat and was about 35 feet long.

  Susan Seeson saw Bessie on July 8, 1990. There were many sighting in September 1990. Bob Soracco, a tourist from Florida, saw the monster while jet skiing near Port Clinton on September 3rd. He said it was very long and was gray. Harold Bricker saw the creature the next day and called DNR rangers. He said it had passed within 1,000 feet of his boat while he and his family were fishing off Cedar Point. Steve Dircks and Jim Johnson saw a “dark blue or black creature, 30 to 45 feet long, with three humps that were flat on top.”